Fashion? Why, you’re already standing up in it

As someone who was born middle-aged and has been growing older and crankier ever since, I do not understand why we have to have fashion or, more importantly, why fashion should be allowed to change.

Take hats, for example. I dimly recall that my grandfather habitually wore a hat. But at some point, people stopped wearing them.

Now, puzzlingly, they are making a comeback of sorts. Of late I have seen a few around. A pork pie hat like the one worn by Detective Jimmy “Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection here, a trilby there, and a baseball cap worn back to front circa 1980s (or was it the 1990s?) over there.

As usual I have missed something. Why hats? Why not long grey walking socks or safari suits? Were those items ever out of fashion and have they come back in?

Readers may now have gathered that in such matters I struggle.

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I managed to wear desert boots for many years after they went out of fashion (at least, I think they went out of fashion). In fact, they were the same pair of boots. Resoled? What did I want them resoled for?

When a friend of my fiance, now wife of many years, saw us together in a photo she wanted to know if I was too poor to buy shoes. Well, they were comfortable.

Some years later, a mate pointed out to me that men in casual attire wear their shirts outside of their pants, rather than safely tucked up inside them. They do? When did they start doing that strange thing, and have they stopped?

Attire by house committee

But this is just quibbling about details, rather than tackling the problem of change head on.

We should have an agreed approach on these matters, perhaps a uniform or at least an agreed set of stylistic variations, and stick to them.

Some may see this as a drastic step, but it is a blow for equality, between the fashion haves and the have-nots.

Perpetual fashion victims such as myself would no longer be disadvantaged, or at least be less disadvantaged. For those who pay attention to such matters there would be savings. You won’t have to rush out to buy the latest fashion; you’re already standing up in it.

Agonising over what to wear in the morning, for those tortured souls who do agonise, would be a thing of the past. But what should we standardise on, and who should make those momentous decisions on what is in, permanently?

Admittedly this would require some debate, perhaps by a committee split between the fashion conscious and fashion victims (“dags" is a convenient label for the second group). The deliberations of this committee may take some time, particularly over issues such as what to wear on an evening out.

If the dags on the committee are anything like me, they will have only a vague memory that once, a long time ago, they went out in the evening, and have quite forgotten what happened when they did, let alone what anyone might have been wearing at the time.

No differences allowed

Perhaps they can use classic films as a reference point, particularly as, thanks to modern technology, dags don’t have to set foot outside their living rooms to refresh their memories on what people wear in films.

Take the classic film Casablanca, for example. Readers will recall that even refugees fleeing oppression in Europe in desperate circumstances still managed to turn up to a nightclub in out-of-the-way Casablanca in full evening dress. That must be style (I suppose)!

So for the guys, at least, we can mandate evening dress for nightclubs, no differences allowed. Oh, and male undergraduates must wear ties, with collars, but no hats.

Those who refuse these rules will receive a visit from the dags of the fashion police, and be compelled to wear desert boots.

There are precedents for this. Sumptuary laws, designed to regulate outward shows of consumption, were common in medieval and renaissance times, although they were usually imposed for religious reasons, rather than for those of equality.

Most importantly, nothing would be allowed to change, or at least not without applications to the committee and full public debate.